Grammarist is a professional online English grammar dictionary, that provides a variety of grammatical tools, rules and tips in order to improve your grammar and to help you distinguish between commonly misspelled words.

Shiv

A shiv is a knife or sharp instrument used as a weapon in prison made from contraband materials. The plural form is shivs. The original spelling was chiv, a Romani word meaning blade, but this spelling has become obsolete.

As a verb shiv becomes shivs, shivving, and shivved. These forms are firmly rooted as slang, and as such do not appear in print publications too often. Though they may be more popular in speech.

Shiv is also a common male first name, after the Hindu god Shiva, the husband of the mother goddess. The Shiv Sena is a political organization in India.

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A shive, on the other hand, is a plug usually of ale casks. Its plural is shives. Not to be confused with chives, which is part of the onion family, but usually considered an herb, unlike green onions which are … onions.

Examples

Elsa gives Bette a shiv and plants the seed of spite that is probably going to lead to the beheading that everybody’s been predicting since the concept of Bette and Dot was announced. [Flavorwire]